“No sir, all accounted for,” Kwon answered.
I smiled. I’d asked for a squad of volunteers, and I shouldn’t have been surprised at who had jumped at the chance to go on this mission. “Kwon, let’s spread out and march toward the pit. Keep a good firing distance between each man.”
Kwon stumped off, shouting orders. I followed my squad and found Sloan at my side. He signaled me.
“What is it, Captain?”
“You should check out Marvin,” he said.
I looked around, not seeing the robot. Sloan pointed to a large mound of charcoal. I headed that way and found Marvin sprawled on the far side of the mound in a muddy puddle. Rain ran down over his metal body and pooled up on the dished out spots on his back. A half-dozen black tentacles squirmed under his body, making splashing sounds.
“What are you doing in that mud-hole, robot?”
“I prefer the designation artificial person,” Marvin said. He didn’t turn even a single camera in my direction as he said it.
I came forward grunting and levering my laser projector over to my left hand. These battle suits had exoskeletal strength, but this kit was extremely heavy and we’d added the most powerful generator kits we had. I’d expected to be fighting building-sized Macros, and I’d wanted the firepower to deal with them effectively.
I splashed into his mud-hole and peered over his shoulder-if you could call it that. The structure under his head was more of a sprouting point for a knot of three extra tentacles. My proximity earned me the attention of a single camera.
“You are obscuring my light source, Colonel Riggs.”
“Don’t you have a flashlight built into that owl-trap of yours?” I asked.
A second camera eyed me, then panned away. He seemed to be studying the watery mud under him, sampling it, zooming in on it and-I don’t know, but I thought he was tasting it, too.
“I don’t want to introduce unnatural radiation. It will spoil the specimen.”
“Have you gone naturalist on me, Marvin?”
“I’m testing this spot as a likely discovery zone. I believe biotic life should be flourishing here.”
“Microbes are everywhere,” I said. “I’ve probably got more of them in me than I do nanites.”
Three cameras. “No, you don’t. The nanites destroy most of them. Only the most beneficial are allowed to survive.”
“Humph,” I said. “I didn’t know that. Anyway, why are you looking for microbes?”
“Not microbes. Specialized biotic residue.”
I started to open my mouth, then closed it again. Suddenly, I figured I had the answer. He was looking for the smart bugs, the microbes we’d found when we’d last been in this system. They’d been held captive in a large gurgling tank of liquid on a captured Macro cruiser. I’d spoken to them briefly through Marvin-before the ship had been destroyed. We’d never encountered them again. As far as I knew, the only ones I knew about were the ones still living in Sandra’s body.
“Sir?” Kwon called, coming over the ridge. He stopped when he saw the two of us crouching over the mud and studying it with great interest. “Ah,” he said. “That must be a Macro footprint, right?”
“What?” I asked. “Uh, no. I don’t know. Marvin is looking for bacteria.”
Kwon’s helmet tilted a fraction, giving him a quizzical pose. “Well, Sloan sent me after you. He didn’t want to turn up his radio to call for you. He says to tell you we are still in a combat zone and his survival instincts tell him to keep moving.”
“Right,” I said. “Marvin, slurp up some of that water to study later. We are moving out.”
“I might damage the ecosystem.”
I gestured around us. “I hate to break this to you, but the Macros beat you to it.”
“No, I mean the tenuous thread these creatures have on life.”
I sighed. “All right. We are moving out. You can huddle down here as long as you like. If you don’t show up at the Macro dome, I’ll try to reprogram it myself.”
Marvin made a variety of protests, but we trudged away over the squelching mud. Finally, he came gliding along behind us. He didn’t say anything, but I suspected he was annoyed with me. That was just too damned bad.
We walked, rather than using our suit propulsion systems. Flying would have been a lot faster, but we wanted to maintain as low a profile as possible. Even Marvin barely used his repellers, relying partially on his tentacles to drag himself forward. He reminded me of some kind of snake-being I’d read about in Greek mythology-a gorgon, that was it.
Overhead, the battle still raged. My squad of ships had located the big Macro with the AA missile cluster. These battles had often gone badly for my ships in the past, but this time was different. It wasn’t only the Macros who’d made technological advancements in equipment and technique. My destroyers kept their formation and kept blowing up missiles until the machine ran out of ammo. Fortunately, there was only one of the machines. Once it stopped firing, they swarmed it and used their heavy laser turrets to cut it apart. It was quickly reduced to slag.
Having destroyed the local anti-air defenses, they moved on to finding the nearest harvesting vehicles. These they destroyed with as much flash and flare as possible. The idea was to keep all enemy attention on them-so the Macros would ignore us. So far, it seemed to be working.
They didn’t get too close to the pit itself, however. I wanted them to draw out the defenders from under their shells, and I didn’t want any them to engage any serious weapons the enemy may have unless there was no choice. The ships were there to raid and harry the enemy-not to plunge into open battle.
In all likelihood, however, the Macro dome had called out for help. In these situations production centers often would summon a large number of supporting troops to its side for protection. This had me worried about my squad. The ships could withdraw in seconds, but not us ground-sloggers. I knew my team could take on a single machine-maybe even two of the big ones. But we would be wiped out if we were caught out here in the open by a dozen metal monsters.
“Let’s step it up,” I called to Kwon.
He relayed the order, shouting with incredible volume. We began trotting through the mud. Our pounding feet sunk ten inches deep with every step. Each time I ripped my armored foot loose from the sucking mud, I was glad for my exoskeletal help. These boots couldn’t come off, and my legs had the power to keep pumping even if I was buried in a wall of mud.
Things stayed only mildly interesting until we reached the edge of the big pit. It was like a crater-a wound in the earth. The land had looked bad in the surrounding region, but it looked hellish down in that dark, spiraling hole. The air was a smoky haze. I could make out the shapes of Macro workers down below, resembling metallic insects at this distance. The light rain continued, combining with the hanging vapors to obscure the bottom.
“This looks promising,” I announced cheerfully. “Who wants point?”
“I’ll do it, sir,” Kwon said.
I frowned, but after looking at the rest of my unenthusiastic team, I finally nodded. I didn’t like having my First Sergeant risk himself on point, but maybe right now it was a good idea. “Okay, move out.”
Kwon took the first step-and slid down a muddy hillside. Without having his repellers on, he was off-balance. He handled it well, sitting down and sledding through the mud.
“Looks like fun,” I said, and headed after him. I managed to stay on my feet all the way to the bottom, but just barely. The rest of the troops followed.
We’d made it down to the first spiraling roadway. A dozen more hundred-foot drops lay ahead-or maybe it was two dozen. At some point, we couldn’t see any deeper into the hole. I peered into the shadowy darkness that lay below.
“That’s funny,” I said, staring at it.
Captain Sloan stepped up next to me. I couldn’t help but notice he was one of the last men to take the plunge down into this sinkhole.
“You’ve got a strange sense of humor, Colonel,” he said, eyeing the shifting cloud of darkness ahead.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. “I don’t get it. I figured the dome was buried down here, but now I’m not so sure. From space, this black cloud looked like smoke or vapor of some kind-up close, I don’t know what I’m looking
